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The org.netbeans.modules.classfile package supports direct
access to a Java Virtual Machine classfile contents.  All elements and
attributes of a classfile are accessible from this package's API.  This
package only supports read-only access of classfiles at this time.
<P>
The classfile library is not actually a NetBeans module, but is only
packaged as one to use NetBeans' Auto Update facility.  By being
packaged as a module, other (real) NetBeans modules may list it as
a dependency and require a minimum version to be present on the system.
The classfile library does not use any NetBeans API, only Java core API.
<P>
The classfile library has only four constructors, as the only objects that
can be created by a client are ClassFile objects (one constructor takes
an InputStream of classfile bytes, another takes a filename, and variants
of these two constructors allow creation of Code objects to be suppressed).
The ClassFile object is then queried for its elements.  A ClassFile and 
its elements should be considered immutable, even though it may be
possible to change one of its objects (if so, it's a bug).
<P>

<h2>Examples</h2>

Here is a simple example which dumps out a classfile:
<p>
<pre><code>
    static void printClass(String classname) {
        try {
            System.out.println(new ClassFile(classname));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.out.println(e.toString());
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
</code></pre>
<p>
Here is an example which prints out any synthetic methods:
<pre><code>
    static void printSyntheticMethods(InputStream in) throws IOException {
        ClassFile cf = new ClassFile(in);
        Iterator iter = cf.getMethods();
        while (iter.hasNext()) {
            Method m = (Method)iter.next();
            if (m.isSynthetic())
                 System.out.println(m.toString());
        }
    }
</code></pre>
 
<h2>Related Documentation</h2>

<ul>
  <li><A HREF="https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se8/html/index.html">Java Virtual Machine Specification, Second Edition</a>
</ul>

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